Late
by Hsuan
Summary: What's a busy writer to do when he's forgotten his little brother's birthday?


_Written in celebration of Tatsuha-kun's birthday._

It was almost three in the morning when the taxi dropped him off at the hospital. In all honesty, he had expected to be here earlier. A couple _years_ earlier, in fact. Alas, the inevitable has happened, and a few hours after his nineteenth birthday party Uesugi Tatsuha crashed himself head-on into a telephone pole. He hoped to all the Gods above that Tatsuha had been paying his insurance.

When he stepped out of the elevator, his hair and jacket dripping wet with rain, his sister looked genuinely shocked.

"You're here." She sputtered.

"You said it was an emergency." He stated pointedly, slightly irritated.

"Well, your usual response to emergencies is 'it can wait'. I wasn't expecting you until tomorrow."

"I caught the last flight out." He shook his head in an attempt to dry his hair, and only succeeded in getting water on Mika's face and in her coffee.

"How is he?"

"He'll be okay."

If Eiri was relieved, he certainly didn't show it on his face. But Mika could tell by the way his shoulders dropped just slightly, that his mood had transitioned from tense to calm. "Stupid punk," He muttered to no one in particular, and reached a wet hand into his equally wet coat.

"You can't smoke in here, Eiri." She said quietly.

He pulled the hand out. "...I knew that."

Eyes dark with rings, hair tousled, chipped red fingernails clutched the plastic coffee cup just a little too tightly. She sat stiffly in the hospital chair, as if she had been sitting there for hours. She probably has. Eiri does not remember ever seeing his sister look so tired. Not even after she had just finished pushing a human being out of her.

"Go home." He ordered. "Get some sleep. I'll look after the brat."

"Are you sure?" She looked up.

"Go." Was all he said. And that was enough. Mika stood, and leaned her head against his rain soaked shoulder. He raised a hand and patted her twice, leaving wet hand prints on the back of her blouse.

"Call me if anything happens. I'll be back in the morning." She said before walking off, the clicking of her stilettos echoing behind her. The elevator doors opened with a 'ding' and she stepped inside. "He was waiting for you all day, you know." She said to him, before the doors slid shut.

It took him a minute to understand what she meant by that. Then he let himself into Tatsuha's hospital room.

The boy was lying on his back, breathing shallowly. Eiri walked up and stood by his bed. There were rolls of bandage wrapped around his head and gauze taped over the side of his face. His left arm and both his legs were heavily casted. He looked horrible. Eiri reached out a hand and touched the undamaged side of Tatsuha's cheek.

"You can stop pretending to be asleep now." He said.

Tatsuha cracked open an eye, then both. He stared at his older brother from under heavy lids, and asked, "Aren't you supposed to be in Hokkaido?"

"I was." The blonde said, landing roughly backwards into the chair behind him. He peeled off his coat and dumped it into the seat next to him, then crossed his arms over his chest. "You owe me a plane ticket. And a couple thousand yen worth of room service that I _didn't_ get to enjoy."

"Your baby brother is lying on his death bed and that's all you have to say?"

"You're not dying, Tatsuha. You just have to pee into a bag and shit into a cup for a month."

"...Excuse me while I cartwheel for joy."

"What was the first thing I said to you when you got that stupid bike?"

"That I was going to get into a huge accident and break every bone in my body." Tatsuha repeated word for word exactly what his brother had told him.

"Well?" Eiri quirked an eyebrow in that 'what do you have to say for yourself' way.

"I didn't break _everything_. Just...a lot of things."

"What the hell were you thinking riding around in this weather?"

"I was in a bad mood. I needed some air."

"You sure you weren't drunk?" Eiri questioned, shifting around for a more comfortable position in the hard plastic chair, "Or high? Or both?"

"No, asshole, I told you, I was just... I just needed to blow off some steam."

"In the middle of a storm."

"Yah, I guess I didn't think this one through as much as I should have, huh." Tatsuha said mockingly.

"Don't talk back to me like you talk back to Dad."

Eiri was glaring at him, and Tatsuha really, really wished that he wasn't intravenously attached to all that medical equipment sitting by his bed. Lying down was definitely not the best way to win a fight.

"You promised me."

"What?"

"You promised me you'd come this year."

Was that what this was all about? He didn't make it to the brat's birthday, so the boy had a fit and decided to go for a thrill ride in the rain? His glared hardened.

"What are you, five? Since when was I obligated to attend birthday parties?"

"It must be nice to be you, huh, to have no obligations to anyone."

Something about the way Tatsuha said that made his stomach tighten. He reached for his breast pocket.

"You can't smoke in here."

"...I knew that." He growled, for the second time.

"You could have called."

"I'm in the middle of a book tour. I have a million and one things I need to do. I forgot."

"That's what you said last year. And the year before that."

"Look, I'm here now, aren't I?" The tour staff didn't even know he was gone. In fact, he bought the ticket while still on the phone with a devastated Mika, and left with nothing but his wallet and the coat on his back. All of his luggage was still back in Hokkaido, sitting on his hotel bed with his dinner.

"That's hardly the point." Tatsuha said, turning his face away.

Eiri stared at the back of Tatsuha's head, while the younger brother stared angrily at the beige hospital wall. With a sigh, the writer reached into his back pocket and pulled out his digital planner. Little electronic beeps filled the room as he tapped the pen repeatedly against the screen.

"What are you doing?"

"Canceling my entire schedule from now until the end of January." He shut the case and tucked the planner back into his pocket. "But that's all the time I can afford to give you. You better learn how to walk again fast."

"Really?" Tatsuha couldn't hide the surprise in his voice, "You're allowed to do that?"

"For my baby brother on his death bed? Sure."

"Don't talk back to me like you talk back to Shuichi." Tatsuha rolled his eyes, and winced, when the movement apparently called into use the side of his face that had landed into the asphalt.

"Anything else you want me to do for you? Sign your cast? Get you flowers? Buy you another bike?"

"Are you bribing me?"

"Is it working?"

"Maybe. If you can make sure that I always get a hot nurse." The teen said thoughtfully.

"Don't push it."

Tatsuha smiled.

"Happy birthday, kid." Eiri said to him.

"It's past midnight. It's not my birthday anymore."

"…I didn't mean to forget." He said, with some difficulty. "I'm sorry."

"Huh? What was that you said? Something about the great Yuki Eiri being sorry?"

Eiri gave him the glare of a thousand deaths, but somehow those looks of his always made Tatsuha laugh instead of cower.

"Alright. I'll forgive you. If you do one thing for me."

"What is it?"

"You see that cup over there on the table?"

"Yah?"

"Bring it over and hold it under my blanket. I need to take a crap."

Eiri stood up and walked out of the hospital room, slamming the door behind him, shutting out Tatsuha's roaring laughter.


End file.
